Structural Design of Wave Energy Devices

The ongoing debate about climate change, and the decreasing amount of available fossil fuels, makes it inevitable that more renewable energy sources must be developed in the future. Although wave energy still cannot compete economically with mature renewable technologies like hydro and wind, it is now commonly recognized that wave energy has the potential to become a major contributor of energy in Europe and worldwide. Today, several wave energy devices are under development. Concurrent reports from the developers have demonstrated different proof-of-concepts and that it is indeed possible to generate electricity from waves. But another similarity between the many wave energy devices is that the production price of the electricity is still not competitive. The present project focuses on the development of design tools and a common design basis for wave energy devices in order to make these devices more competitive. The prospect of an overall wave-to-wire model, implying the possibility for optimizing the structural design of wave energy devices based on loadings from hydrodynamics, Power Take-Off (PTO) and mooring, has the potential of drastically lowering the cost of energy produced while at the same time increasing the reliability of wave energy devices. The ambition to develop such a model in the context of a DSF Strategic Research Alliance, i.e. as a focused research effort building on key Danish competences in a partnership with the most qualified European researchers in the field, offers the promise further strengthening Danish universities and industry as centers of excellence in the field, while also linking future industrial development of wave energy devices even more strongly to Denmark.